Public Relations and marketing are different from each other despite having various overlaps. This is why the media formats used by a top PR firm also never match the ones used by a marketing firm. Although we can say that Public Relations is one crucial communication tool used in the marketing process and no one can deny that.
When we talk about Public Relations, all the strategies used in this process entirely focus on building the image of the brand. Hence, a PR expert works on a complete package of ideas, reach, conversions, acquisition costs, etc. to meet the goal.
In this article, we are going to discuss the different types of media formats used in Public Relations that helps in building a strong PR strategy. To share heavy content like press releases, PR professionals use three media types:
- Earned Media
- Paid Media
- Owned Media
1. Earned Media
It is the most organic and toughest one that is used to promote your brand using free publicity methods. It is a great way of content marketing where you earn the trust of your audience that ultimately helps in promoting your products and brands. Usually, you have to run after various media outlets and publications to publish your content on their platform but, using this method, you can push your customers to write positive reviews and share the same on their social media platforms for spreading more awareness. It is said that nothing can be more powerful than “word of mouth marketing”. So, earned media is all about gaining the trust of potential customers and using them to spread more visibility of the client’s brand.
2. Paid Media
As the name suggests it is media that a PR agency pays for publishing their content. It is the easiest media approach where the PR strategist can have complete control over the analytics of how the media is performing in the market which can’t be had in earned media. The various channels that PR professionals use for sharing their content or press releases include PPC ads, influencer marketing, social media ads, etc. The only thing to be considered about using this media format is, that it is completely paid and you need to pay from content creation to its publishing. So, before switching to this one, always keep a check on the budget of the entire project.
3. Owned Media
As the name suggests, it is the media format that is completely owned by the PR experts. Using owned media, PR experts take care of the what kind of content to be published, when, and how. Some of the examples of owned media are blog posts, email newsletters, social media copy, website copy, original images, case studies, etc. Using all the above methods, it becomes quite easy to control and track the performance of the strategy.
Now, as you all know about all the three media formats, each one of them has their own role and combining all the three helps in making an affective PR strategy.
